George Filopoulos, 30

Metrovest Equities Inc., President

Where is George now?

While George Filopoulos is too modest to call himself a white knight, plenty of other people do. As an investor in distressed real estate, he has saved hundreds of co-op owners from losing their homes.

In his biggest coup to date, he stepped in to rescue Gregory Park in 1998. At the time, the 770-unit Jersey City co-op complex was only days away from being auctioned off for nonpayment of its mortgage from the federal government. The complex's immigrant apartment owners were about to lose their life savings.

Mr. Filopoulos stopped the auction by getting the co-op to declare bankruptcy. He then quickly moved to line up a new lender. With the situation stabilized, he began a massive renovation of the property without increasing the apartment owners' maintenance fees. That allowed Mr. Filopoulos to start renting up vacant apartments.

Today, the value of units in what has been rechristened Metropolis Towers has quadrupled. The owners love him. ''When George walks in, they look at him with adoration in their eyes,'' says Allen M. Turek, the co-op board's lawyer.

Mr. Filopoulos got into real estate after dropping out of college a decade ago. He failed to find prosperity, though, until he and partner Frank Chiarello at WRA Properties found their niche a few years later investing in troubled assets, turning around a number of properties.

In 1996, Mr. Filopoulos founded his own firm, Astoria, Queens-based Metrovest Equities. He sees complicated, risky deals like Gregory Park as the best way to make money in the brutally competitive world of metro New York real estate. ''I'd hate to be working this hard for nothing,'' he says.